Finance and Financial Management Commons^™

Fabrication Runtime Decision For A Hybrid System Incorporating Probabilistic Breakdowns, Scrap, And Overtime, Yuan Shyi Peter Chiu, Yunsen Wang, Tsu Ming Yeh, Singa Wang Chiu

Department of Accounting and Finance Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Manufacturers today need to optimize their fabrication runtime decision by meeting short customer order due dates externally and managing the potentially unreliable machines and manufacturing processes internally. Outsourcing and overtime are commonly utilized strategies to expedite fabricating time. Additionally, detailed analyses and necessary actions on inevitable product defects (i.e., removal of scraps) and equipment breakdowns (such as machine repairing) are prerequisites to fabrication runtime planning. Motivated by assisting today’s manufacturers decide the best batch runtime plan under the situations mentioned above, this study applies mathematical modeling to a hybrid fabrication problem that incorporates partial overtime and outsourcing, inevitable product defects, …

Community Bank Liquidity: Natural Disasters As A Natural Experiment, Kyle D. Allen, Matthew D. Whitledge, Drew B. Winters

Finance Faculty Publications and Presentations

We examine how community banks respond to liquidity shocks created by natural disasters. We address community banks’ responses to liquidity shocks due to their focused geographic and economic presence, which coincide with their communities’ exposure to the disasters and the ability of the local banks to meet their needs. We find that community banks respond to liquidity shocks by managing their balance sheet, rather than any single balance sheet account. In particular, we find that they respond to the liquidity needs of their communities by increasing loans as deposits are withdrawn.

Empirical Essays On Contingent Convertible Capital Securities, Andrea Golfari

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation consists of five chapters on contingent convertible capital securities, their macroprudential role within the regulatory capital stack of financial institutions, and the effects of the regulatory environments surrounding them on their design.

Chapter 1 This chapter briefly introduces this dissertation, including its motivation and structure.

Chapter 2 The first part of this chapter describes every design feature of contingent convertible capital instruments (CoCos) and provides a review of the literature on their role as macroprudential tools and on optimal CoCo design. The second part of the chapter offers a complete discussion of the role assigned to CoCos in …

Essays On Financial Materiality Of Corporate Social Responsibility And Corporate Strategies, Yang Lan

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

This dissertation investigates how the endorsement of certain social activities by CSR standards impacts stakeholders’ interpretation on firms’ motivation of doing CSR and how managers make decisions on which specific CSR activities they would like to participate in. The first essay examines how the standards release of CSR by Sustainability and Accounting Standards Board (SASB) affects the relationship between material CSR and firm performance outcomes in terms of stock returns (for investors) and sales growth (for customers), through shaping investor and customer perceptions on the motivation underlying a firm’s material CSR activities. I further argue that a sharp increase in …

Short Interest And Corporate Investment: Evidence From Supply Chain Partners, Xia Chen, Guojin Gong, Shuqing Luo

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Short interest contains valuable information about a firm’s business fundamentals. We investigate whether such information affects business partners’ real investment decisions in the supply-chain setting. We predict and find that a supplier’s future investments (including inventory, R&D, and tangible asset investments) decrease with its customer’s current short interest. This negative relation is stronger when the supplier faces greater difficulty in assessing its customer’s business fundamentals and when short interest is more likely to indicate longlasting deterioration in the customer’s fundamentals. Additional analysis does not support the alternative explanation that the supplier adjusts investments in response to unfavorable information obtained via …

Endogeneity Of Commodity Price In Freight Cost Models, Kian Guan Lim

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In this paper, we answer a novel question on how the value of goods carried can affect the freight cost. We focus on the issue based on a more specialized freight market involving transport of seaborne iron ore from mining ports to Qingdao in China during the period 2014 to 2019. We construct simultaneous systems of demand–supply equations on both the iron ore market and the freight market. In the models, we explain how endogeneity of iron ore as a regressor can arise due to the nexus between the two markets, and that the freight demand is largely a derived …

Do Large Gains Make Willing Sellers?, Dong Hong, Roger Loh, Mitch Warachka

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Using unique real estate data that allow for accurately-measured capital gains, we examine whether sell propensities depend on the magnitude of a seller's capital gain. We find that short-term sell propensities are flat over losses and increasing in gains. Consistent with their higher sell propensities, selling prices are lower for properties with larger gains. Large-sized short-term stock investments also have sell propensities that are flat over losses and increasing in gains, although the sell propensities of typical-sized short-term stock investments are V-shaped (Ben-David and Hirshleifer (2012)). Our findings provide empirical support for the realization utility theories of Barberis and Xiong …

Know Thyself: Access To Own Credit Report And The Retail Mortgage Market, Amit Kumar

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Borrowers may misestimate their probability of mortgage approval in the absence of precise signals of creditworthiness. Credit reports, which contain such signals, became easily accessible for all U.S. consumers since 2005, while it was already the case in seven states. A difference-in-differences strategy exploiting this change shows that pool quality of mortgage applicants improved as a result—approvals increased, whereas subsequent delinquencies decreased. These findings are consistent with a mechanism where under-estimators enter the applicant pool and over-estimators drop out, because easier access to credit reports reduces misestimation of one’s own probability of mortgage approval. Additional findings rule out supply-driven explanations.

Decentralized Finance: Implications Of The So-Called Disintermediation Of Financial Services, Nydia Remolina Leon

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Decentralized Finance, known as DeFi, refers to the use of blockchain and digital assets or crypto-assets for the provision of financial services. Under this concept, services such as loans, insurance, crypto-asset exchanges, among others, are offered, are structured based on crypto-assets and through technologically decentralized applications. This chapter discusses the concept of DeFi and how it challenges the traditional market infrastructures of the financial sector, demystifying the idea of absolute decentralization, generally mentioned in the crypto-asset arena, from the perspective of decision-makers and governors of these decentralized applications. Subsequently, the chapter analyses the opportunities and challenges of DeFi for consumers, …

Internal Capital Markets And Predictability In Complex Ownership Firms, Ran Chang, Angelica Gonzalez, Sergei Sarkissian, Jun Tu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Using global cross-firm ownership data, we find that both stock returns and cash-flow news of ownership-linked firms predict focal firm's returns for all types of ownership structures: subsidiary-parent, parent-subsidiary, subsidiary-subsidiary, and parent-parent. This effect, observed only after the establishment of cross-firm ownership, is not subsumed by focal firm or industry momentum, or alternative inter-firm relations, including customer-supplier links and shared analyst coverage. Our findings are explained by mispricing due to internal capital markets - a mechanism unique to complex ownership firms. Higher internal capital market activity among ownership-linked firms also induces larger investments and lower external financing of the focal …

Representation Learning In Finance, Ajim Uddin

Dissertations

Finance studies often employ heterogeneous datasets from different sources with different structures and frequencies. Some data are noisy, sparse, and unbalanced with missing values; some are unstructured, containing text or networks. Traditional techniques often struggle to combine and effectively extract information from these datasets. This work explores representation learning as a proven machine learning technique in learning informative embedding from complex, noisy, and dynamic financial data. This dissertation proposes novel factorization algorithms and network modeling techniques to learn the local and global representation of data in two specific financial applications: analysts’ earnings forecasts and asset pricing.

Financial analysts’ earnings forecast …

Can Financialization Save Nature? The Case Of Endangered Species, Diane-Laure Arjalies, Delphine Gibassier

Business Publications

The current biodiversity loss is dramatic. Over the past 50 years, more than 68% of the mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles, and fish on earth have disappeared, putting the planet's survival and its inhabitants – including human beings – at risk (WWF, 2020). Financialization, or the transformation of nature into financial assets, is increasingly proposed as a solution to the biodiversity crisis. Proponents of financialization believe that assigning a monetary value to nature will incentivize human beings to protect habitats and their species. This article offers a four-mechanism model of nature’s financialization, explaining why it is virtually impossible to financialize nature. …

Stakeholder Capitalism: An Investigation Of The Linkage Between Corporate Social Responsibility And Financial Performance, Cynthia Walsh

College of Business Theses and Dissertations

Utilizing a large sample of firms over a 13-year period, we examine the impact of ESG Score on profitability. While we fail to find a significant effect for the continuous ESG Score variable, we find conditions where Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) plays an important role in financial performance. Specifically, after controlling for relevant firm characteristics and fixed effects, we find that the highest quartile of ESG Scores experience an average increase in return on assets of 4%. This effect is amplified for the CSR-sensitive energy industry. Additionally, CSR can play an important role in mitigating loss during times of economic …

Modeling Empirical Stock Market Behavior Using A Hybrid Agent-Based Dynamical Systems Model, Daniel A. Cline, Grant T. Aguinaldo, Christian Lemp

Northeast Journal of Complex Systems (NEJCS)

We describe the development and calibration of a hybrid agent-based dynamical systems model of the stock market that is capable of reproducing empirical market behavior. The model consists of two types of trader agents, fundamentalists and noise traders, as well as an opinion dynamic for the latter (optimistic vs. pessimistic). The trader agents switch types stochastically over time based on simple behavioral rules. A system of ordinary differential equations is used to model the stock price as a function of the states of the trader agents. We show that the model can reproduce key stylized facts (e.g., volatility clustering and …

Research On Financial Support For Scientific And Technological Innovation—Review And Prospect Of Development Of Financial Science And Technology In Past Ten Years, Lu Zhao, Yu Cheng, Qi Zhang

Bulletin of Chinese Academy of Sciences (Chinese Version)

Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), the central and local finance, in accordance with the requirements of President of the People's Republic of China Xi Jinping, gave full play to their functions, and introduced a series of policies and measures to support scientific and technological innovation, which has effectively promoted the development of science and technology in China. The article reviews the basic situation of financial support for scientific and technological innovation in the past ten years from nine aspects, and looks forward to the future development and reform of financial science and technology.

Spring/Summer 2022

Business Exchange

Business Education Reimagined; Scholarship Honors Legacy of Professor Sandra Shelton; Revised Bachelor’s in Business Degree Curriculum Debuts This Fall; School of Accountancy & MIS Names New Director; Sulin Ba Appointed Driehaus College of Business Dean; Real-World Consulting Projects Prepare Students for Careers; Alumnus Brian Ruben: “Paying It Forward Is the DePaul Way”

Simplified Portfolio Optimization Using Cramer’S Rule In Excel, Tom Arnold, Joseph Farizo, Terry D. Nixon

Finance Faculty Publications

The matrix algebra associated with finding minimum variance portfolio weights, mapping the efficient frontier, and determining the tangency portfolio weights is greatly simplified in Excel by applying Cramer’s Rule. Only a scant knowledge of linear algebra is necessary for producing a very intuitive presentation for a multi-asset portfolio. The technique is very easily replicated for an assignment or for providing a classroom resource.

Essays In Behavioral Corporate Finance, Corporate Governance, And Higher Purpose, Kingsley Wabara

Olin Business School Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Does individual financial risk-taking behavior indeed vary by gender? If yes, how exactly? Moreover, what happens when individuals with differential tendencies (e.g., risk-taking, sense of higher purpose, et cetera) come together in small groups such as the corporate board to decide on financial risk-taking or conduct intense board oversight? What role does group or board structure play in all of these? In effect, how does the within-group power and influence asymmetry affect the manifestation of the individual tendencies in boards’ decisions, corporate behavior, and financial outcomes? The lack of conclusive answers to these questions is at the core of several …

Essays In Financial Intermediation, John Michael Dooley

Olin Business School Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

My dissertation focuses on two broad questions. First, how does access to income affect the credit decisions of households? Second, how do individuals affect the behavior of financial institutions and financial contract terms?

In Chapter 1 with Emily Gallagher, we provide the first study of how access to plasma donation as a source of discretionary income affects households financially. In the United States, households donate plasma for compensation at a higher rate than they use payday, auto-title, rent-to-own, or pawn loans. Plasma donors are young, poorly educated, and financially vulnerable with limited access to households. We use the dramatic growth …

A More Efficient And Effective Objective Measure Of Financial Disclosure Quality: Omissions Of Seven Key Financial Statement Variables, Ying Zhang

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation research includes three Chapters. Chapter One proposes a new and simple measure of financial reporting quality. Chapter Two and Chapter Three apply this new measure to examine the association between financial reporting quality and firms' internal governance issues, such as internal control quality and a possible outcome of internal control weakness (ICW), financial restatements.In Chapter One of the thesis, I propose a parsimonious, theory-based and empirically-supported measure of missing variables, REPORT. Chen et al. (2015) proposes a measure of disclosure quality, DQ, based on missing financial statement variables. DQ includes hundreds of items and is complex to program. …

Young Adults And Money: The Covid-19 Pandemic, Michael Mariano

Honors Projects in Finance

This study looks to explore the relationship between the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the economy and young investors. More specifically, this research looks to answer the question: how have young adults, ages 18-25, responded to the economic distress caused by the COVID-19 pandemic with their investing decisions? Through analyzing a sample of young adults, ages 18-25, this study will develop a deeper and broader perspective on the unique impact that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on the investing decisions of young adults. Using a mix of literary studies on similar historical events and a sample study of young …

Frameworks Used To Measure The Societal Influences & Effectiveness Of Impact Investing, Mya E. Baptiste

Senior Honors Projects, 2020-current

The purpose of this thesis is to learn how capital generates positive returns for society through impact investing. I address the different forms of impact investments along the spectrum and examples of companies that are grouped into each category. Afterward, I highlight the various pre-existing frameworks being used by the industry to properly measure their social returns and then provide insight into my personal experience working with Citigroup, Inc. Impact Fund. This paper includes an empirical study to address my hypothesis that companies who invest in producing social returns receive a positive impact on their financials. It was concluded that …

Influence Of Heuristic Techniques And Biases In Investment Decision-Making: A Conceptual Analysis And Directions For Future Research, Mensah Morris Ayaa, Williams Kwasi Peprah, Maxwell Okpoti Mensah, Adu Bismark Owusu-Sekyere, Bamfo Daniel

Faculty Publications

Purpose: The primary purpose of the study was to examine the roles of heuristic techniques and cognitive biases in Investment decision making and suggest directions for future research. Design/Methodology/Approach: The study adopted the literature review method to solicit an understanding of the heuristics and biases central to behavioural finance and influence investment decision-making. Findings: The paper provides conceptual insights into the influence of heuristic techniques and cognitive biases in investment decision-making. Results from the conceptual analysis show that in recent times, investors in their bid to minimise losses and maximize gains employ a range of heuristics which often lead to …

Case Study In Enterprise Risk Management: Lion Rock Summer Camps, Inc., Arthur Meaney

Honors Theses

Enterprise risk management is a crucial part of the modern business world. Being unprepared to handle risks that a company may face can lead to financial demise. Since the 1960s, the insurance industry has steadily moved away from the focus on insurance buying. Enterprise risk management strives to identify company-wide risks, evaluate their frequency and severity, come up with risk management and loss control methods, implement said methods, and monitor their effectiveness over time. In this case study, I identify risks for Lion Rock Summer Camps, Inc. and suggest various risk management and loss control methods. Lion Rock Summer Camps, …

Influence Of Stocks Intrinsic Valuation On Investment Decision Making: A Literature Review, Maxwell Okpoti Mensah, Williams Kwasi Peprah, Adu Bismark Qwusu-Selyere, Mensah Morris Ayaa, Bamfo Daniel

Faculty Publications

All over the world, investment decisions are regarded as critical decisions. Investors prior to the investment decision would like to know the possible risk and returns associated with the kind of investment to be undertaken. Investors make an excellent investment decision based on facts and figures. Since an investor cannot just by looking at a stock say whether it is overvalued, undervalued or at a fair value. This study is based on a literature review determining the intrinsic value of a stock using the Discounted Cash Flow model, with a particular emphasis on the Internal Rate of Return (IRR) and …

Coinbase Global Inc. Strategic Audit, Decker Bobin

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

Coinbase is a cryptocurrency exchange founded in the U.S during 2012 by Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam. Coinbase’s application allows users to buy, sell, and exchange different cryptocurrencies on the open market. Cryptocurrencies are digital assets used as a medium to quickly transfer value, globally, without any middleman. Some cryptocurrencies have different technology than others, but all are based on blockchain, and cryptography. Blockchain technology allows transactions to be built into a chain that is forever accessible, hence the name “public ledger.” Cryptography is what ensures ultimate ownership, through seed phrases, and security through encryption. Coinbase has several large competitors …

Support New Business To Solve Old Problems With Kentucky’S Keystone Waste From Bourbon & Brewing, Samuel C. Kessler

Commonwealth Policy Papers

Provided here is a policy solution from the backside of Kentucky bourbon and brewing to upcycle Kentucky’s “keystone” wastes and grow businesses in the process. Potential effects range from removing the bottleneck on bourbon production and producing GHG-friendly biogas to lowering the price of milk.This full whitepaper brief provides an incentive model for keystone wastes which have a provider and a use. It is equally applicable for policymakers or advocates wishing to place a policy incentive behind waste-to-product upcycling, businesses involved with methane sequestration & renewable biogas energy, and shifting regulatory and penalizing models of pollution into incentive model for …

Case Studies In Accountancy, Michael Keene

Honors Theses

Case Studies in Accountancy is a compilation of case studies completed in fulfillment of ACCY 420. My cases are titled as followed: A Tale of Two Cities, Financial Statements, Presidential Debate, Tax Cuts and Job Act and Taxodus, Professional Interview, Financial Crisis, Case Competition Amazon Overview, Case Competition Amazon Audit Analyst, Case Competition Amazon Tax Advisor, Case Competition Amazon Advisory Consultant and Case Competition Amazon’s Equity Position. These cases covered a variety of topics in the world of accountancy as well as touching on our personal lives. In the first semester of the course, cases were typically individual before moving …

Accounting Case Studies, Jack Mcinnis

Honors Theses

Accounting Case Studies is a compilation of independent case studies performed during the Honors Accounting 420 class. The case studies consisted of multiple performed individually, and a case competition with an assigned group. The case studies I performed individually consist of an assessment between the two cities I was interested in beginning my career in, a case study about the presidential debate in 2020, an evaluation of the optimal corporate tax, a mentorship interview, and an analysis of the 2008 housing crisis in the United States. My group for the case study included my fellow classmates; Francena Sekul, Caitlyn Henry, …

Escaping From The Dilemma Of Corporate Bribery, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

CUHK research finds firms located in regions with more corruption cases protect themselves by speeding the recognition of bad news and delaying the recognition of good news